DELAYED - a story in a hundred words

DELAYED

When my flight is seriously delayed, I phone Ellie.

She’s furious. “How could you? We’re meeting the vicar tomorrow!”

Her shrill voice carries to the woman beside me, who smiles sympathetically. “My boyfriend has to attend a business dinner alone – he thinks I’ve done it deliberately.”

The airline offers hotel rooms and we share dinner – I haven’t talked to Ellie for that long, ever.

We meet again at breakfast, share a cab back to the airport, and part on a promise – once the decks are cleared we’ll meet again.

We have so much more to say.

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Rochelle is the indefatigable woman who runs this weekly beanfeast and you can find her on  https://rochellewisoff.com/   if you follow the froggy link you can read scores of other stories prompted by her photograph.

I have been busy painting the door frames on my landing. It's a small cottage and the three doorframes, which comprise three sides of a square, have only an inch of wall between them. This makes positioning the drip sheet easy, but it's also easy to step back and smudge the paint, and oh! the repetetiveness of the task! Only the light shining on wet paint tells me where I've been and which is still waiting to be done.

Writing and gardening have filled my spare time :)
PS - I may be AWOL next week - we are off to Lisnaskea in Northern Ireland to visit my daughter.

HOME & HERMITAGE - A-Z Challenge

H is today's letter in the A-Z blog, and I'm starting off with a 100-word story prompted by this photograph.

HOME

“You’re having another baby?” Henry pushed his plate away and stormed out of the house. The train whistle echoed mournfully across the fields as he darted over the tracks and slumped against a tree. A baby! he raged – his life was ruined.

Watching his home being erased frame by frame as the freight cars passed, he was suddenly afraid it might disappear entirely, and the moment the train had gone he raced back home, straight into her arms.

 “I love you, Henry,” she said, kissing his tear-stained face, “And the baby is going to love her big brother.”

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Thanks to Rochelle for the photograph and for hosting Friday Fictioneers. You can read other stories by following the link on her blog  https://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/

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HARKING BACK TO MY A-Z THEME, did you know that Tenerife has its very own saint?

HERMANO PEDRO was born in the mountains of Tenerife, and spent his early years as a goat-herd before he felt called to preach by example by helping the sick in Guatamala.

 There is a HOSPITAL there dedicated to him, but his original cave home - now THE HERMITAGE OF SAN PEDRO - lies directly beneath the western end of the runway of Reina Sofia Airport, Tenerife.

 The airport authorities actually wanted to move it but there was an uproar. The Hermitage is a place of pilgrimage and besides, how can you move a ravine and its caves? 

So Hermano Pedro stayed. A priest says Mass there regularly, and the walls of the cave are festooned with holy pictures and slips of paper containing prayers. One of those prayers is mine. It was answered.

LINDA & LOS ABRIGOS

LINDA means “pretty” in Spanish – an appropriate name for my daughter-in-LAW - And of course, L is for LOVE.

LANDING in Tenerife you will see, LURKING in the terminal, LINES of tour operators waiting to LEAD their LAMBS to the coaches and whisk them off to their hotels. Too many of these are all-inclusive these days and consequently the average tourist LEAVES again without catching more than a glimpse of our LOVELY island.

LUCKILY there are some who will venture out, board a bus or hire a car, and LAUNCH themselves into the unknown. It’s almost impossible to get really LOST because if you’re going up there’s Mount Teide as a LANDMARK, and if you’re going down there’s the Atlantic. So LEAVE the beach or the pool for a day and explore - even the most ordinary of towns can be hiding secret treasures behind the tourist façade. For example ---
LOS ABRIGOS is a village near the airport. The seafront has been pesestrianized in recent years, and when you walk past the tiny church you will find, overlooking the small harbour, a wealth of restaurants. It's worth visiting just for the food. There's a langostera in a side street that guarantees your seafood will be fresh, though I'd better warn you - even my OH can't manage more than five langostinos - they're huge.

But to work up
an appetite before you eat, take a stroll up the slope on the far side of the harbour, where you will find a rocky cove with the original landing–place for boats – a LETHAL one-in-three ramp with planks inlaid for purchase. Above the cove, a narrow pathway winds round a house and along the steep cliff-face to the top road.

Steps near the ramp take you past a boat-shed where they still make and repair boats, to a tangle of LITTLE LANES between the houses of the old village that LIE clustered together for protection against the Atlantic winds. My daughter-in-law, who is an artist, took some wonderful photographs of old doors and windows for her thesis.

After this dip into the past you can spend a LEISURELY evening eating your dinner overlooking the harbour, LISTENING to the wavelets LAP the rocks, LAZILY LOOKING at the stars, and watching the LIGHTS reflected in the LIMPID waters.

And this is spooky. When I LOADED this photo of a terrace garden onto my LAPTOP, it asked me “Who is this?” But there’s nobody in the picture. LOOK very closely at the white wall in the front of the picture and you might just see a crack and a spot that could add up to a face – or a ghost?

LABELS ARE LIMITING. What exactly does LITERARY mean in the writing world? We’re advised to check out an agent before submitting, and the word literary has always puzzled me. I write stories – who decides if they’re LITERATURE or not?

Sitting on my computer is a completed book about a young LABOURER-cum-petty criminal who rescues an abused boy, and how the Strange Adoption changes both their LIVES. A professional critic and my writers’ circle say it should definitely be published, but if I can’t fit it into a category, how can I pitch it to an agent?

LASTLY, for anyone who has been missing my Toy Poems – go on the poem page to read about Boofuls the LAVENDER bear.